Every night, as I turn off the light in my children’s room, the request arrives: Tell us a story. I’m not sure why they insist. My stories are random at best, invented on the spot and narrated through a haze of parental fatigue. One never knows what will happen in them, least of all me. Recently, for example, a bison showed up. Bison don’t typically appear in my stories, but the children are familiar with them, because until about a year ago we lived in Montana.
I don’t remember what the bison did in the story. What I do know is that suddenly my voice swelled with sorrow, then broke. I’d never wept about a bison before, but then again, I wasn’t weeping about a bison. I was weeping because the bison belonged to a place I miss so much it hurts. I was weeping for home.
Most people lose at least one home in their lifetime. If we are very lucky, we lose our homes to time, to circumstances that aren’t all bad. We might still live in the city of our birth, but that city is no longer what it used to be, and we ache for the old sights and sounds; we might leave a place in pursuit of a dream or a calling. If we are unlucky, our homes are swept from us—or we are swept from our homes—by natural disaster, by war, by the decisions of well-dressed people in climate-controlled rooms. Losing a home in one of these latter ways is nothing short of traumatic.
